provided, of course, that the offensive line isn’t leaky enough to drain the talent pool of its value

Ooooh! Nice play on words!

Turk and Trent. Trent and Turk. Whatever order you put them in, they will be directly linked to our offensive success. Each needs each other to be better this year.

Hopefully, with more talent this year, we won’t have to do things like line a Robert Royal up at TE. We’ve got enough WR depth and receiving ability at TE (Fine and Nelson) to avoid trying square pegs in round holes. I like how Turk’s O revolved around spreading the ball to different receivers last year, and that becomes even more critical this year. With TO needing the ball, and the other talent surrounding him, we have to get these guys involved early and often. That means not only taking more chances with Evans and TO deep, but also sustaining drives and getting the ball to guys in areas to succeed.

I want to see more play action and more roll outs. We have the RB talent and an OL that looks like it’ll be stronger run blocking, so the play action passing game should present itself this year. We just need Turk to be more willing to take advantage of these opportunities. I really like play action roll outs too. From the handful of times we did it last year, I seem to recall Trent having some decent success there. This would be another way to mask Walker’s deficiencies at LT.

I totally agree with you that Schonert tried too hard to fit the players into his offense instead of tailoring his offense to the players. Back to the square peg, round hole idea, Schonert never really seemed to play to the strengths of our players (Evans deep, Lynch/Jackson on screens, Hardy on jump balls, Trent on roll outs, etc), and that was infuriating to put it mildly. There’s too much talent at the skill positions this season to not make changes geared towards playing to the strengths of these players. If Schonert is too stubborn or egotistical again, I doubt we’ll have a whole lot of success with his schemes/playcalling.

Is KC Joyner a closet Bills fan or something? Many of his ESPN chats centered around the Bills last year, as I recall.

Is it me or were the 90’s Bills good because they threw against Run looks and ran against Nickel/Dime Defenses?

IMHO this years Bills now have the Receivers to hurt a team putting 8 in the box to stop the run by going over the top to Evans or hitting the quick slant to TO.

Likewise, by spreading the field using 4 receivers and a single RB formation, there should be gaps to run through in the Oline. Or run screens and delays against the big pass rushes we will face.

I would be happy if we became predictable for one thing – our unpredictability in play calling certain downs and distances!

Really was an enigma wasn’t he? He showed just enough flash that he’d get the ball thrown to him, but then turned it over 75% of the time. Has there ever been anyone with a worse turnover % in the TE/WR group? Between fumbles and bad routes that led to interceptions just WOW he’s in a class by himself. Good riddance.

K.C. Joyner does make some interesting points about Schonert’s offense but I would hardly call it “skeptical”. If anything, he praises the results the Bills got when getting the ball to Lee Evans and the RB’s. The ONLY criticism he includes seems to be leveled more at Robert Royal than at Schonert or anyone else. I, like most Bills fans, was a little surprised but not upset when Royal was released in the offseason. After watching Royal underwhelm for several seasons it was clear that the team needed to go in another direction at TE and the front office recognized this and made the right move. When Royal was signed his supposed strength was as an in-line blocker. He was average at best in his blocking role and an extreme liability in the passing game.

Just please don’t be so predictable this year. That’s all I ask, Turk.

Still, as Joyner cautions, the Bills still don’t have a “do-everything” cast of players, which could be Schonert’s ultimate downfall:

Schonert’s downfall won’t be because he lacks a cast of ‘do-everything’ players. If he fails (thus dooming Jauron in the process) it will likely have more to do with his blasé attitude towards taking advantage of every scoring opportunity.

The Big Diss……..

For anyone who missed it, Schonert gave a disasterous interview at the Combine. Hmmm….that doesn’t work right. Here’s the link to cut and paste if it doesn’t show up as something you can click on: http://www.buffalobills.com/media-lounge/videos/turk-schonert-interview/4af26d88-c896-48af-9a5e-80030978183c

For the part about time management go to 13:12 in the video. He trots out excuses about all of the wasted time outs and how he can’t keep track of who is on the field. He calls first half timeouts overrated (twice) and then says “if you don’t score at the end of the first half, you don’t score.”

It’s easily the worst interview I’ve ever seen from any coach outside of Detroit.

 … is when you’re inside the 10-yard line, GIVE THE BALL TO LYNCH!!!!!

I was pulling my hair out at Schonert’s play-calling in the redzone last year …

They’ve improved a line that couldn’t run block and removing Royal makes them instantly better. That guy was a money for a key drop every other game.

Which was to make players fit his scheme, when he should be making schemes to fit his PLAYERS. He has a much better set of skill players this time, that should be able to fit his scheme, but is that a good thing?

I wonder if he has the ability to grow as a play caller and to take advantage of the fact that teams will be piling up on the lines going to 1 on1 coverage outside in a calculated move to dare us to throw early next year. And when Trent proves he can do so (he did with beating the blitz early last season) and teams start stacking up to take away the pass, can he adjust and make it so the ground game chews up yardage, clock and gets us points.

We need points, at ANY time, this team is not good enough to give them away on the offensive side of the ball, regardless of what half, quarter, or which way the wind is blowing, for a young team, every point is precious. We need to score, more, and more often.

What do you want him to do? Pop a blood vessel over it? You can’t go back and change it but you can work on it for the future. “If you don’t score at the end of the first half you don’t score.” That’s like saying if we don’t score more points than the other team we don’t win. It’s a completely worthless comment.